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Larry Lloyd, founding president of Memphis Leadership Foundation (MLF), has for 12 years led efforts to establish a street outreach to gangs, a job-training program for maximum security ex-convicts, one of the largest inner-city medical clinics in the South, and Tennessee's most prolific affordable-housing construction program. And MLF has not used a dime of government money.

"To receive it, we would have to rewrite all of our literature," Lloyd said. "Our purpose is explicit: To change people's lives through evangelism and discipleship in Jesus Christ."

"We can and will make a case to [the federal Department of] Health and Human Services that our doctors at Christ Community Medical Clinic be funded for their excellent medical care, for prescription drugs, and for equipment that in and of itself is not evangelical," Lloyd said.

"Moreover, we could go to HUD [the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development] and ask them to buy us vacant land on which to build affordable housing. The land itself will not be used for evangelism. But obviously, I can't see government funding our gang outreach."

Implementing charitable choice may be easier said than done, Carlson-Thies said. But determined newcomers should be encouraged: One study in 1999 found 125 new church-state collaborations in nine states, most of them with evangelical organizations.

Copyright © 2001 Christianity Today. Click for reprint information.

The Christianity TodayWeblog regularly covers the charitable choice debate. In the last few days, for example, it took note of the comment by Don Eberly, deputy director of the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives, that office was postponing its plans—and Bush's subsequent denial of the delay.

The Center for Public Justice Web site offers reams of information about "charitable choice" plans past and present

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April 2 2001, Vol. 45, No. 5